Apparatus, methods, and articles of manufacture consistent with the invention relate generally to spatial registration of information, and in particular to capturing an image of first information having embedded data, decoding the embedded data in the captured image, retrieving second information based on the decoding, and spatially registering the second information with respect to the first information.
It is often useful to register a first set of information with a second set of information. Augmented reality, for example, is implemented by creating a composite view of physical reality registered with computer-generated information related to the physical reality. In an augmented reality system, a first set of information, such as an image of physical reality, may be registered with a second set of information, such as information related to the image of physical reality.
One conventional approach to creating augmented reality is to capture an image of a physical scene, identify objects in the scene using a scene recognition algorithm, retrieve information based on the identified objects, and create a combined display of an image of the physical scene and information related to the identified objects, thus augmenting the physical scene. One drawback of such a system is that a large amount of processing power is required to execute the scene recognition algorithm, especially when it must differentiate between many different objects of a scene, and identify the location of the objects in the scene. Identifying the location of the objects allows the retrieved information to be placed at a location in the composite display that is registered with the identified object. The retrieved information is “registered” by spatially relating the retrieved information to the identified object. Another drawback is that registration generally cannot be determined from a partial capture of the scene.
What is needed is a system capable of registering first and second information that does not suffer from the limitations of conventional systems.